painting ship hull

Heres,a tip that may have you doing away with tape when you do waterlines .When you use tape make sure to REMOVE the tape within at least  ten minutes of finishing the painting . That way you won,t get a hard line on the hull . Now here,s what I do . I sit the model on its stand . I make sure that it is LEVEL with the worktop fore and aft . Take a LARGE magic marker-PERMANENT black color . And make a stand for it from LEGOS . Now the point is ,to get the top edge of the marker at correct top of the waterline . Now after you,ve afixed the marker to the LEGOS with some tightly stretched tape , start at the stern . I say this  , Because that is where most folks have problems with waterlines . Now keeping enough pressure on the marker  , slide , slowly , very slowly , but , smoothly down the length of your hull . This will give you a perfect line every time . When you are finished , spray the hull with clear flat. This will set the marker ink . Now come down the scale distance from top to bottom . Now take a pencil and after adjusting the height draw a line from stern to bow . Now tape if you wish . What I do is use a TESTORS paint marker in red . I adjust the LEGO stand to make sure the line falls at the scale distance from the top of the waterline (boot top ) . After doing this then take your choice of color and fill in between the two lines . There , it sounds difficult , but , An old sail ship modeler in SEATTLE taught me that years ago and it,s never failed me , and it,s really simple .  good luck    tankerbuilder

I also remove tape soon after painting.

Don Stauffer

I also remove tape soon after painting.

I've left my waterline masking in place a week or more with no ill effects.  

My painting method is to first freehand paint a broad black belt around  the waterline.   Once it dries I mask using 3M vinyl auto painters pin striping tape.   It bends and conforms well to compound curves like under the stern.    Burnish it down well.  This tape isn't for finish pin stripes,  rather its used to define edges for custom flames, scallops, and the like.   Its available in varying widths from auto body & paint supply shops.

I then paint the underhull.    When that dries I mask the underhull, running the masking tape (3M blue painters tape,  Frog Yellow or Frog Green) up onto the vinyl pin stripe tape.    Do not run the masking over the top edge of the vinyl tape.

Then I paint the upper hull.   It may be in several steps to paint the deck.  

Once the upper paint is dry I remove all the masks and have a straight boot topping separating the red underhull from the gray upper hull.   Now this may have taken me more than a week to complete allowing for work schedules,  honey-do projects, and drying time.    I've had masking wait up to a month for removal.   The flexible vinyl tape may be the key.

You need to practice and find a method which works for you.

I follow with Ed's method of reverse masking, except that I airbrush the black first. There's been a time or two when the handbrushed black showed through as a texture if the topsides are light. Aircraft modelers use this a lot for those fine lines that run all over the top of the wing showing the limits of the "no step" areas. Impossible to mask the usual way

A note on this is that I've learned that the "conveniently" split waterline/ full hull two piece kits are anything but. The waterline on my current project, the Trump O'Brien is WAY too high. So I have had to glue it together, fill the seam, prime and sand it before i can paint the hull.

I will give the "Lego" method a try.  It is similar to using a waterline marker for wooden ship models. Thanks for that tip!

Bill Morrison

I should have been a little more detailed in my earlier post.  I only mask the upper color from the "below-waterline" protective paint.  If there is a boot topping I make a decal for that.  Making black straight lines on clear decal paper is about the easiest homemade decal job there is. I can make a uniform thickness straight line in my graphics software far easier than I can mask it.  I make twice as much as I need in case I screw any segments up.  For small models two stripes are needed, one for each side, so I make four.  For larger models the 11 inch length of paper requires two or more segments per side, so I make as many stripes as needed and then double that for the extras.